We Eat Our Own (25 page)

Fabi was in the back of her boat rowing, rioting with laughter. You saw him out of the corner of your eye, dropping the
oar, mumbling Merda, thrusting one arm over the prow to fish it out. It made your heart rate spike, made your mouth open to shout No. You were thinking of the river sharks he told you about, sharp-toothed things in the water.

But then, with one awful throb in your frontal lobe, you began to understand.

Irena kept looking at you with that mix of bemusement and pity. A dragonfly hovered in the air between you, drew a zipping X in the air in front of her face, and you knew the truth and made yourself say it in your head:

Irena is not angry with you; she has no more use for you.

There were never any sharks.

You are not the lead in this movie.

You don't know when you'll leave. You don't know anything. Everyone here has lied to you.

• • •

The day you shoot the love scene, you ride in the front of the canoe alone.

One of the extras is in the rear, rowing and steering both, and he doesn't manage to dock the boat so much as drive it into position, the keel slamming into the rough mud of the bank. The boat tilts and leans and everyone yells, Whoa, whoa. Your knees are still shaking as you clamber onto the shore, your shoe catching a loose mudslick and sliding you into the splits. You straighten yourself up, look around to see if anyone has noticed.

No one has noticed. Everyone is staring at something moving down the beach.

It is Ugo. He is ten yards away and getting farther, and it takes you a moment to realize that Irena is with him, her elbow
clamped tight in one of his hands. They are twenty yards away, then thirty. She is rigid. She does not look at him, but he stares straight into the side of her face, never breaking stride.

This isn't right. Ugo usually takes his time at the beginning of the day, setting up cameras and testing sight lines through the trees. The two of them stop twenty yards off and right away they're speaking fast, loud, him in Italian, her in meek nods and single syllables. They're too far to hear, but based on what happens in a moment, you'll be able to guess at what they're saying.

Something like: I don't know what the fuck happened between you and the American over these past few days, but today, Irena, you are in love.

Or:

Today, Irena, you fucking talk to him. Today, you
get
him to talk.

When she turns back to face you, her expression is stern and terrified. But then, just like that, it's like a gear turns. She smiles. She waves, just a flicker of her two little fingers, and then the hand drops. It sends a chill over your whole body.

Ugo gestures: Va' laggiù. Irena jogs over to a thick-trunked tree, half the branches hacked off by set dressers to let in more of the light. She looks back to him, and he nods once. She leans against the trunk, settles into what's left of its shade.

You are alone for a moment, watching her: her spine a loose S-curve under the same white shirt. Exhaustion and fear pull over you like a sleeve.

Then Ugo's voice is shouted over a distance, from behind a camera five yards away. What are you waiting for, Richard? Porca puttana. Go fucking get her.

• • •

What that means, though, you're not sure. Irena described this scene to you in your room, and the best you can remember, Richard is supposed to creep up behind Gayle, to lunge at her from out of frame, and shout
boo
before overcoming her with kisses. You're supposed to keep kissing her through her screams, and her screams are supposed to evaporate into laughter, and then into something else.

Ugo could have changed his mind by now. But Ugo signals you to enter, and you don't pounce, you don't surprise and Irena opens her arms to you like she's expected you all along. She tastes the way she did before, smoked salt and coffee, and she touches you the way she did before, both thumbs pressed to the bulges of bone behind your ears. You can't shake the strangeness of it. Your mouth moves but it's like all the nerve endings in your lips have gone dead. You have one hand on her waist and one forearm leaned against the tree over her head, and the bark is sharp against the thin skin there.

You keep going. Spit wells in the back of your throat and heat stings at the whites of your eyes but you don't stop. This is the important thing: to remember your training, to keep acting through accidents, through pain, to use the pain to add dimension and heft to your performance.

But it shouldn't hurt to kiss someone.

Irena yelps, too: a splinter of bark has slipped into her elbow. She doesn't break character, either—no, it's more like she
relishes
the pain, her hips tilting deeper into you, her tongue finding its way between her lips. You startle. You shy. You keep kissing her, but your mouth moves without intention; your hands still rove over the small of her back, but robotically, like they don't belong to you. A cameraman takes a step forward, and you can hear him breathing. You look up and into the lens,
and realize that it's not a cameraman: it's Teo. He's holding a camera, but he's a part of the scene, too.

Cut. Richard!

I'm sorry.

You do the scene again, but it's worse. You lunge this time, but it feels like she lunges back, your teeth clicking against each other, your sternums colliding, and everyone can see you wince.

Cut!

You receive her kiss like a fist to your mouth.

Cut!

You're shaking; why are you shaking? She can probably feel it in your fingertips, gripping her hipbones, her jaw, the base of her neck.

By the end of the twentieth take, Ugo's face is stone. He keeps his fist at his mouth, the muscles of his jaw knotted tightly behind it. He's standing right where he's been standing all day, behind that distant camera, watching you. You've never had a director who stood during shooting before, the sinews over his knees raised like he's ready to walk straight into the shot and kneel down to scream more directly in your face. You've never shot a movie before, period, besides some short films by pretentious
NYU
MFAs
on their thesis years. Even the
MFAs
shot mostly in the university theaters where they could control the light grid, could sit in plush chairs in the dim shadow below the lip of the stage.

Irena's whisper is harsh in your ear, the first words she's said to you in days: Don't you get it?

Get what?

What he wants you to do. She grips you around the side of your head and pulls your ear closer to her mouth. He wants you to force me.

You stare at Ugo, the short silhouette pacing and smoking. Irena's fingers are still entwined in your hair.

Stop looking at him. Her voice is urgent. He hates that.

It is too late. Ugo is at your elbow already.

• • •

A revision:

Now, Ugo wants you to act as if you
know
that Teo's character is filming you.

He gestures, aims the lit end of his cigarette at your throat. You understand? Richard's a pervert. He knows his friend is right there, and he wants them to see everything.

Would Richard do that? You ask yourself. But you don't dare ask Ugo, and Ugo, of course, doesn't bother to explain.

He says, When you take her shirt off—he puts his hands on your torso to demonstrate—move her body like this, so you're showing her tits to the camera. He maneuvers you roughly, to show how he wants it done.

You look over at Irena, still leaning against the tree. She is facing away from you like before, her body angled toward the river. She is still, and slivers of light fall between branches and land on the side of her face like a tangle of scars. You wonder if it's method acting. If it is, it's good.

I don't know. You say it aloud despite yourself.

Ugo looks at you. His tongue moves in his mouth, like he's just on the edge of a word. His hands hang at his sides, twitching a bit at the knuckles. You brace yourself for a slap.

Then, he exhales. You feel no relief from it, but you smile like you do. Ugo walks away, rubs the ridge of his eyebrow with the heel of his hand and laughs like he is tired.

He doesn't know? Ugo asks, gesturing toward the crew.
Listen to this, Richard Trent, the
director
of this
film,
doesn't fucking
know
if this is what he wants to do. Scemo.

Ugo seethes.

No, wait, he continues, I'm sorry. Excuse me. This actor. This fucking
actor,
thinks he
has
to know everything.

I didn't say that.

He thinks this is his movie!

I didn't mean—

But you do. Ugo says, turning toward you again. That
is
what you think, isn't it, Richard? Like everyone else on this fucking set. Everyone in this fucking town, with your insurance, your precautions—

The crew starts looking around at each other, feet shifting in the mud.

This is when Ugo takes a step back and smiles. This is when a thought sparks behind his expression, and he pivots to face the crew.

You know what? he says. Go home. All of you. Take the canoes.

Fabi looks up from his Corona to object.

Send a boat back for us at sunset, Ugo says.

Fabi mutters something in good-natured Italian. Ugo screams back in English.

I don't give a shit about the insurance. He spits. Baldo flew back to Italy four fucking days ago. I thought I'd heard the last about the fucking insurance.

Your skin lights up with anxiety.

And don't talk to me about the production schedule, either. You're all professionals. Figure it out.

Fabi tries his limited English: But the cameramen—

Do I look like I can't operate a camera? A shock of sweaty hair has come unglued from Ugo's forehead; dry spit pearls in
the corners of his mouth. He grabs a camera bag from a startled crew member, throws the strap over his shoulder. Fuck, we might not even film this. He laughs. We're going to rehearse. Okay? We're going to rehearse this thing all day if we have to, until he gets it right.

He points at you.

The props and make up crews are halfway down the beach already. Fabi just stands there, staring and looking helpless.

I need to work with Richard, Ugo says, willing himself to be calm. For the rest of the day. I need to work with Richard.

Irena starts to leave, but Ugo stops her. You stay, too.

• • •

Two birds thrash in the trees. The crew ambles.

Let's go into the jungle, Ugo says. You're too distracted here.

The birds scream and collide and tumble out into the sky over the beach, still mauling each other. Irena's expression is impassive; she walks forward like a string has pulled her. You have to will your feet to move, to follow Ugo in the direction that he's going. You have to. Why won't your body do it?

You're standing still when Ugo leans down and picks up the machete.

You try the ligaments in your jaw. Where—

We need to go where it's quiet. Ugo hacks once through the bush and finds a place between trees where you can walk. He takes another step and has to hack again, mutters, Shit. Shit.

You follow. You keep your eyes on your feet as they push through the mud. You keep walking until the mud recedes, and then you navigate over roots. As you walk, you listen to the crew
gathering up, bending your hearing behind you until you've walked so far that you can't hear anyone anymore. There are no zippers or snapping cases or canoe prows moving through water, no voices whispering questions. Now, there's the shimmering sound of birds and insects and leaves, all of them loudening the farther you walk. It's getting darker as the canopy thickens, a weird brown-yellow darkness like a room with old paper taped over the windows.

Ugo's voice is calm, a little breathless as he hustles. Tell me, Richard—do you read the European news?

You high-step over a tree root, somehow gnarled two feet out of the ground. No.

Have you ever heard of the Red Brigades?

No, I don't think I have.

That's part of my inspiration for my film. He hacks. That's part of why—Irena, tell him, I don't feel like translating.

Irena tiptoes onto a tree stump and springs straight off, eyes glued to the ground. The Red Brigades killed the prime minister, Aldo Moro, a few other hostages. When we rehearsed in Italy, Ugo set up a projector and showed us all these photographs they took of the bodies.

They put the bodies in the trunks of cars, Ugo says. They wrapped them up in the white sheets with the bullet wounds here—he points to his own torso—and here and here and here. Front page of the national newspaper. All that blood.

Ugo sends the machete through the bush again, hits a sapling that disintegrates instantly, releases a smell of rot. The camera over his shoulder jostles.

You swallow. Why did the Red Brigades do that?

To send a message, Ugo says. There's an edge to his voice, a hoarseness like an impending laugh. The government had killed rebels first. It was an act of
justified retaliation.
He hacks
again. Of course the newspapers didn't show those pictures. It's hard to photograph so many dead.

I don't understand.

Easier just an
important
one. A prime minister. That's an image that they'll print. You can't take a picture of a whole system of control.

It sounds like—

Do you know about Italy, Richard? Do you know about the blood in our streets?

I don't.

What about Colombia, do you know what happens here? What's happening here right now?

It's not my—

America. Fine, then, America, tell me you know about American violence, at least.

You pause, trying to come up with something to say. Irena is five yards in front of you, looking out into the trees. Her white shirt looks like a handkerchief blown down a subway tunnel.